The problem of spam in established communication technologies, such as electronic mail, is well-recognized. Spam may include unsolicited messages sent by a computer user over a network to a large number of recipients, sometimes including attached files or hyperlinks. Spam includes unsolicited commercial messages, but spam has come to be understood more broadly to additionally include unsolicited messages sent to a large number of recipients, and/or to a targeted user or targeted domain, for malicious, disruptive, or abusive purposes, regardless of commercial content. For example, a spammer might send messages in bulk to a particular domain to exhaust its resources.
Spam has more recently emerged as a problem afflicting other means of communicating over networks, such as messaging technologies for mobile devices and instant messaging (IM) systems. Spam may be especially harmful to providers and users of these messaging technologies, which are often characterized by immediacy and/or reduced bandwidth. Moreover, with respect to mobile messaging, spam may impose a direct cost on users, who are often charged for each message, such as a Short Message Service (SMS) text message, received by a mobile telephone or other mobile device.
Clipping services provide a mechanism by which a messaging technology, such as SMS, IM, or the like, may be employed to enable a user at one remote device to provide a selected clip of content to another remote device. If the clipping service is made generally available to network users, however, it is at risk of being exploited by spammers. Thus, it is with respect to these considerations, and others, that the present invention has been made.